When will the gold-backed #Petroyuanreplace the paper-backed #Petrodollar? What are your thoughts on Universal Basic Income (#UBI)? #Harvey and #Irma projected to cost $200 billion. Shipping pollution intensifies storms at sea, and MORE. Wake Up Wyoming: 9.12.17

Global Ponzi meltdown/House of Cards/deflationary collapse ##

The four-decade long monopoly of the U.S. Petro-Dollar as the world’s reserve currency is coming to an end. Unfortunately, most Americans have no clue that when the Dollar loses its reserve currency status, life will get a lot tougher living in the U.S. of A. Let’s say, Americans will finally receive “Precious metals religion.”

The U.S. Dollar Index fell considerably yesterday and is now down below a key support level. In early morning trading yesterday, the U.S. Dollar Index fell to 91.46, down 73 basis points:

In June, China took the first step towards overturning the petrodollar by establishing a direct-trade relationship with Russia allowing for oil purchases to be made strictly in yuan. And just like that, the petroyuan was born.

Not long after China’s new deal with Russia, Chinese officials began negotiations for a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia. But the discussion didn’t flow as smoothly as it did with Russia.

Russia welcomed the petroyuan with open arms. But other big oil exporters haven’t been as keen to embrace it. Despite rising concerns around the U.S. dollar’s stability and viability, the yuan is still too illiquid and unestablished globally in comparison, causing many exporters to shy away from accepting it.

But China has an ingenious way to solve this problem: Simply back the petroyuan with gold.

(Reuters) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday his cash-strapped country would seek to “free” itself from the U.S. dollar next week, using the weakest of two official foreign exchange regimes and a basket of currencies.

Maduro was refering to Venezuela’s “DICOM” official exchange rate in which the dollar buys 3,345 bolivars, according to the central bank.

At the strongest official rate, one dollar buys just 10 bolivars, but on the black market the dollar fetches 20,193 bolivars, a spread versus the official rate that economists say has fostered corruption.

A thousand dollars of local currency bought when Maduro came to power in 2013 would now be worth $1.20.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on Friday his that government will sell oil and other commodities in currencies other than the dollar, in a bid to weather US-imposed sanctions on the embattled country.

“I have decided to start selling oil, gas, gold and all other products that Venezuela sells with new currencies, including the Chinese yuan, the Japanese yen, the Russian ruble, the Indian rupee among others,” he said during a television broadcast.

The European Union’s economic and financial committee has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic policy and is worried that his efforts to boost protectionism pose a threat to the global economy, a German magazine reported on Saturday.

The report was released in August by the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute. Roosevelt research director Marshall Steinbaum, Michalis Nikiforos at Bard College’s Levy Institute, and Gennaro Zezza at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio in Italy co-authored the study.

The study made economic forecasts for three proposals: a full universal basic income in which every adult gets $1,000 a month ($12,000 a year), a partial basic income in which every adult gets $500 a month ($6,000 a year), and a child allowance in which parents get $250 a month ($3,000 a year).

The larger the universal basic income, the greater the benefit to the economy, according to the report.

A $1,000 cash handout to all adults would grow the economy by 12.56 percent after eight years, the study finds. Current Congressional Budget Office estimates put the GDP at $19.8 trillion. The cash handout would therefore increase the GDP by $2.48 trillion.

The following is commentary by Joe Jarvis of The Daily Bell:

Wow! You’re saying that by the U.S. government simply creating money out of thin air, we can increase the amount of money in existence! Why didn’t we think of this before? Why are we only $20 trillion in debt! why not go $200 trillion in debt. Why not $900 trillion?! Who cares, it just boosts the economy.

## Fault lines/flashpoints/powder kegs/military/war drums ##

The US State Department has approved $3.8 billion in weapons sales to the tiny island nation of Bahrain. The Pentagon confirmed the approval and the State Department has notified Congress, who held up a similar sale last year over Bahrain’s many, many human rights problems.

Rohingya insurgents, whose attack on Myanmar security forces last month triggered savage military reprisals, declared a monthlong truce Sunday as refugees continued to flood across the border into Bangladesh only to face scant basic resources, hunger and illness.

The Muslim insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army issued the truce statement on its Twitter account and urged Myanmar’s government to reciprocate in order to assist all victims regardless of their background.

Chinese state banks have started suspending transactions through accounts held by North Koreans, making it nearly impossible to do business between the two countries, according to sources familiar with the situation.

## Migrants/refugees ##

As Hillary Clinton begins a book tour to promote her 2016 campaign autopsy “What Happened,” video has begun to swirl online of a 2014 interview between her and CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to promote her previous book, “Hard Choices.”

During the exchange, Clinton had some tough words for the children of illegal immigrants, including waves of unaccompanied minors coming in 2014 — telling Amanpour that the United States was a nation of laws and that they probably had to go.

“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” said Clinton “So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”

Thunderstorms directly above two of the world’s busiest shipping lanes are significantly more powerful than storms in areas of the ocean where ships don’t travel, according to new research.

A new study mapping lightning around the globe finds lightning strokes occur nearly twice as often directly above heavily-trafficked shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea than they do in areas of the ocean adjacent to shipping lanes that have similar climates.

The difference in lightning activity can’t be explained by changes in the weather, according to the study’s authors, who conclude that aerosol particles emitted in ship exhaust are changing how storm clouds form over the ocean.

The new study is the first to show ship exhaust can alter thunderstorm intensity. The researchers conclude that particles from ship exhaust make cloud droplets smaller, lifting them higher in the atmosphere. This creates more ice particles and leads to more lightning.

The results provide some of the first evidence that humans are changing cloud formation on a nearly continual basis, rather than after a specific incident like a wildfire, according to the authors. Cloud formation can affect rainfall patterns and alter climate by changing how much sunlight clouds reflect to space.

“It’s one of the clearest examples of how humans are actually changing the intensity of storm processes on Earth through the emission of particulates from combustion,” said Joel Thornton, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle and lead author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

“It is the first time we have, literally, a smoking gun, showing over pristine ocean areas that the lightning amount is more than doubling,” said Daniel Rosenfeld, an atmospheric scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who was not connected to the study. “The study shows, highly unambiguously, the relationship between anthropogenic emissions – in this case, from diesel engines – on deep convective clouds.”

With the highest temperatures on record and unprecedented heat waves hitting Europe this year, Africa’s ‘Great Desert’, the Sahara, is set continue its relentless march on the Southern European countries until it occupies more than 30% of Spain just three decades from now.

## Intelligence/security/internet/cyberwar ##

Best Buy Co, the No.1 U.S. electronics retailer, is pulling Kaspersky Lab’s cyber security products from its shelves and website, amid concerns that the Moscow-based firm may be vulnerable to Russian government influence.

CNN executives explicitly told their investigative team to stop looking into potential ties between the Trump administration and Russia following a series of high profile reporting errors led that to the resignation of three journalists in June.

## Propaganda/censorship/fake news/alternative facts ##

If you believe the New York Times, the Russian state is the diabolical force behind Black voter suppression in North Carolina — and, by imaginary extension, the main suspect for polling irregularities in Black precincts across the country during last year’s election.